Revolutionary plastic waste management technology wins the TOP 100 Swiss Startup Ranking 2024
The TOP 100 Swiss Startup Ranking showcases the 100 Swiss start-ups with the greatest potential. Cleantech start-up DePoly tops this year's ranking.
Once a year, the Swiss start-up ecosystem comes together at the TOP 100 Swiss Startup Award to highlight the most promising Swiss start-ups at an international level. Held this week in Lausanne, the highly anticipated event brings together investors, industry leaders and entrepreneurs to recognise the best emerging companies that are shaping the future across a wide range of industries. A jury of one hundred start-up investors and experts selected the 100 most promising start-ups that are less than five years old. The winners of this year's 14th edition come from three different sectors: Cleantech, Engineering and Fintech.
DePoly takes home gold
800,000 tonnes of plastic waste are produced in Switzerland every year. Only a fraction is recycled. DePoly, winner of the TOP 100 Swiss Startup Award 2024, is building an industrial demonstration plant in Lower Valais that will break down plastic waste and make it available again as a raw material for the plastics processing industry. For this idea, the young company, founded in 2020 by former employees of the EPFL in Lausanne, won first place in the ranking of the 100 best Swiss startups in 2024 (read our feature from 2021).
The EPFL cleantech spin-off aims to turn traditional recycling logic on its head: its system can recycle almost any plastic container using a chemical process that breaks down the plastic into its basic compounds. The new process does not require PET to be sorted by colour or material, so it can be processed in one batch. The chemical process depolymerises the PET at room temperature, without any additional heat or pressure. The pre-seed round at the end of 2020 raised CHF 1.3 million, and the seed round in the summer of 2023 raised CHF 12.5 million. Negotiations are underway for a larger Seed A round.
The cleantech sector has a total of 16 representatives in the TOP 100, confirming a positive momentum that began a few years ago with Swiss 'unicorn' Climeworks, which was named one of the world's most innovative companies in 2024.
Effective heat removal for chips
Runner-up Corintis has developed silicon-based microfluidic cooling solutions that enable 10 times more heat to be extracted from silicon chips than conventional methods, with 50 times greater energy efficiency. The silicon-based cooling fluid is directed over the surface of the chip via an attachment with a tiny channel system. This removes heat directly where it is generated.
AI-based expense management wins bronze
We all know how time-consuming expense management can be. This year's bronze winner, Yokoy's solution, uses artificial intelligence to automate all corporate expense management and provide actionable insights by combining expense management, invoice processing and smart corporate card management on a single platform. Want to know more about their story? Read our swiss.tech interview with Yokoy cofounder Philippe Sahli.
In the same breath, the TOP 100 Swiss Scale-up Ranking 2024 also honoured the Swiss scale-up companies that are between 5 and 10 years old and have the best chance of making a big breakthrough.